Whiteout: Lost in Aspen

by Ted Conover

The Pulitzer Prize finalist and National Book Critics Circle Award–winning author of Newjack delivers an irreverent, poignant, and revealing meditation on the lives of the rich in Aspen, Colorado. 

Here is a classic report on the sweet temptation of wealth and the vainglorious quest for paradise as they exist in Aspen, Colorado, featuring a "cast of characters (that) includes such barn-size satirical targets as exclusive health clubs, over-the-hill drug dealers and movie stars and rock stars of wattages bright and dim" ( The New Republic ).

Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir, Travel, Sociology, Adventure, American, Biography Memoir

288 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1991

About the author

Ted Conover, a "master of experience-based narrative nonfiction" (Publisher's Lunch), is the author of many articles and five books including Rolling Nowhere: Riding the Rails with America's Hoboes, Coyotes: A Journey Across Borders with America's Mexican Migrants, Whiteout: Lost in Aspen, Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing (winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award and finalist for the Pulitzer Prize), and, most recently, The Routes of Man: How Roads Are Changing the World and the Way We Live Today. He is a distinguished writer-in-residence at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute of New York University."

Reviews

[Sharon Orlopp · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ted Conover grew up in Colorado and so did I. He spent time “undercover” in Aspen as a taxi driver and news reporter. My husband ran his flooring business in Aspen and Carbondale in the late seventies, so aspects of this book intrigued me.

Conover does a good job of describing the “old” and “new” Aspen and the challenges over growth and tourism.

I am a huge fan of John Denver and Conover’s book and interview with Denver provided insight into the yin and yang Denver and Denver’s fans may have experienced. I remain a steadfast Denver fan.

[Tim · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a thoroughly enjoyable read from beginning to end, a witty look at the life and culture of Aspen, Colorado. Conover is a journalist who had previously written about hobos and and Mexican illegal immigrants, and despite his concern for the underprivileged, he finds himself partly seduced by by the pleasures of this mountain resort area. Most of the book consists of picaresque first-person accounts of what he encountered during a couple of years there. First, he worked as a cab driver for Mellow Yellow Taxi, then as a catering assistant, and finally as a reporter for the Aspen Times. In his travels around the town, we are introduced to new age enthusiasts, the very wealthy, and a range of colorful characters.

Aspen was once a simple mountain community, but it began to boom in the 1970s as word got out about its skiing and scenery. Fortunately for some and less for others, the town grew into an enclave for the wealthy and a trendy vacation spot. Most local employees cannot afford the town's rents and are forced to live an hour's commute away. It is a playground for rich folks and tourists, the town is packed with bars and nightclubs - the city even provides a service called Tipsy Taxi, which allows drunks to have a free cab ride home and gives them a break on overnight parking tickets.

The area is full of palatial homes, a couple of which our hero gets to experience. The biggest of all belongs to a Saudi prince who, by offering good jobs and generous philanthropy, was allowed to bypass zoning laws and build a 55,000 square foot mansion. Aspen is also home to various mystics, including a group called Domain Shift which is run by people with names like Laster NightSky M.D. and Angel Fire. Our hero has a somewhat unpleasant experience at one of their weekend chautauquas.

An entire chapter - perhaps the best one - is devoted to the man most responsible for putting Aspen on the cultural map: John Deutchendorf, better known as John Denver. Conover does a fine job of looking into his persona. He interviews him, observes him at a few functions, and attends a don't-worry-be-happy seminar at his Windstar Institute. He tells an anecdote about an angry Denver chainsawing his kitchen counter in half during a spat with his wife.

All in all, a revealing and enjoyable portrait of a place that inspired in me the same mixed feelings that it did in the author. This is the kind of journalism that is fun to read and is still quite informative (althou it could have been a little more so.)

[Jonathan Ashleigh · Rating 3 out of 5]

As someone who grew up in Aspen during the time Conover wrote this, I can't help but love some of the things he said about my hometown. He tells a lot of truths about many things that have not changed but the book felt more like an article from a magazine than worthy of a book format. I read this book after reading Rolling Nowhere: Riding the Rails with America's Hoboes and I will probably read more of Conover's books because he writes much of what I would like to write. However, if I were to name a book about Aspen "Whiteout:" it would have at least some to do with a white substance that doesn't fall from the sky. John Zelazny is an emerging Aspen author who you should look into if books from Aspen are your thing.

[Robin Larson Bathke · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was intrigued by the premise of this book since I liked in Aspen during the time the author lived there and wrote this book. Although he only stayed for two years, I feel he captured the essence of the “Aspen intrigue”. We moved on after 19 years, but I felt much as he did about the illusions and ultimate emptiness of the Aspen lifestyle. It was interesting to refresh my memory on the town back in the late 1980’s, and remember so many of the same people he writes about. Even though the book is dated it still provides a good insight into life in the mountain town during that period in time.

[Shannyn Martin · Rating 4 out of 5]

It might have been more honest for me to give this book three stars. After all, I was relieved to see that most of the other reviewers here didn't enjoy Whiteout as much as Ted's other books either. It took me days to get through some of the chapters-- not because of their legnth, but because I could barely find an F to give about some of the subject matter (for example, who the hell cares about how long [literally like 1/3 of a friggin chapter] it took you to figure out the confusing layout of your new office at the Aspen Times, Ted? 😂). 

But what the hell, I'm still gonna bump it up because 1.) Ted's an O.G., 2.) this is *good writing* occasionally overshadowed by subject matter that will bore you half to death if you aren't personally that interested in it and 3.) what I appreciate most about Ted's books, as I have said in other reviews, are his observations about people and human nature. 

In other words, I didn't mind putting up with the more boring parts. I have this personal theory (well, this is probably a lot of other people's theory too, especially given the number of sitcoms and movies that feature a scene with a good angel on one shoulder and bad angel on the other) that human beings potentially all have a darker side to our nature, one that might be mostly latent or undeveloped in the majority of us. So what might it take to lead any single one of us down the same road that the most depraved people society produces take? I'm personally guessing some unique combination of nature and nurture.


By exploring the lives of Aspen's uppercrust, particularly the celebrities who flocked there (at least at the time the book was written --late 80s/early 90s), Ted highlights one way nurture can contribute, how human beings can be incentivized towards narcissism. I'll admit, I was most interested in the chapters about his experiences with celebrities-- even celebrities I have never heard of (they don't tend to have a long shelf life, and this book was published two years before I was born). The fact that they still seemed so important to me even if I had never heard of them probably hints at some superficial traits within myself that causes me to unconsciously value them based on their status.

Whatever the case, I was shocked at a passage about how rudely Barbara Walters (who I always thought seemed like such a level headed person) had apparently treated a restaurant wait staff, how entitled her behavior was. Another passage really struck me: Ted walks into a restaurant and spots the actor George Hamilton (I'd never heard of him either. But apparently he was well-known back in the day, handsome and extremely, EXTREMELY tanned.) Ted noticed that George seemed to be too distracted to pay attention to his date, and he kept looking off to a spot in the distance. Later Ted realized that, in the exact spot George had kept staring, was a mirror... He noticed a lot of similar behaviors in other celebrities. 

At some point I wondered: if you have everything you could ever want (money, fame, people fawning over you and constantly telling you how great you are) is it basically just inevitable to become your most egotistical self, to the point you see other people as mere nuisances if they don't serve your ego?

Here's something else I found interesting: at the time Ted wrote this book, Jesse Jackson was running for president. The stridently liberal, wealthy Aspenites flocked to his rally in their expensive, brightly colored ski gear. Some of them were even moved to tears by Jackson's hard-knock life speech. I wondered why such wealthy people, especially celebrities, who are so disconnected from the problems of the real world, tend to be so liberal-minded. Are they just virtue signalling, or do they genuinely care? Ted even mentions that the mayor of Aspen at the time was a staunch vegetarian, animal rights activist (or something or another) who posed naked for a calendar and etc

"That seems well-meaning enough," I thought. It's nice to want to think about your effect on the world around you, and what's wrong with being open-minded? But I think what I realized is that-- although it is well-meaning to want to care about others, and to want to speak up for people who are treated unfairly in the world, to want to challenge conventions-- like most people in life, the celebrities are also searching for deeper meaning... It's just that, when you live in a world surrounded by yes-men and where your basic needs are met so many times over, where your ego is pumped up more than you even realize, your desire for meaning, your ability to connect with people outside your world, easily gets tangled up with your ego, your need to feel virtuous... moral... special... *superior.*

As Ted points out, people in Aspen aren't interacting with society's poor or marginalized. There aren't any homeless or downtrodden people in Aspen (even the regular gray and white collar nurses, police officers and teachers can't afford to live in the city limits unless they purchase a $100,000 mobile home. At Christmastime, the local Santa was a trim, fit ski instructor. Everyone is skinny, tan and rich in Aspen.) In other words, for example it's pretty easy to look down on meat-eaters if you don't have any real clue how much fresh produce costs the average person. It's easy to pride yourself on supporting the downtrodden if "supporting the poor" means donating to a charity from a distance rather than getting to know any of them and experiencing the full range of the good, the bad and the ugly.

It's no wonder, then, that this sort of naive thinking could lead to the conference Ted observed in the book, where wealthy Aspenites showed a VHS tape depicting starving, crying people in third world countries suddenly smiling in joy at the sight of wealthy Americans leading a run through their village with a "we are the world" type of song in the background. Apparently the Aspenites, caught up in 90s New Age spirituality, earnestly believed they could solve the problems of the third world (something they seemed to genuinely care about) by introducing them to their recreational hobbies.

Ya gotta read this shit to believe it, so here is the exact passage from the book: "... most of the two-hour session was concerned not with empowerment or leadership training but with letting the audience know about the First Earth Run, which the couple had organized, and seeing how people responded to it. The First Earth Run, designed 'to celebrate our possibility to live in harmony with each other and with the planet,' involved mainly, as far as I could tell, the export of jogging from from California to countries of the third world. A videotape was shown, opening with shots of a crying black mother and her starving child, of maimed kids suffering, of third world misery. Then torch-bearing joggers appeared, resulting in scenes of people cheering and smiling ('The Masai had a total knowing of the power of the flame,' intoned Gershon.)... the lesson of the film, according to Gershon, was that 'we can create the world we want..."

I... I just don't even know how you come up with something like that.

And yet, as the book went on, Ted also found himself slowly seduced by this superficial culture, to the point that he slowly found himself looking down on his hometown, dressing like the Aspenites, contemplating buying an expensive car and property, unable to enjoy restaurants that weren't "high brow" enough. His friends kept noticing, sadly, that he had changed. I guess this book, however boring, is a reminder of how easily we can all fall, how important it is to stay grounded. So that's why I don't mind giving this book an extra star I guess. :)

[Meredith · Rating 4 out of 5]

This feels like an old genre - connected American white guy lives weird for a few years then reports back on it in a boom. But as I read on, the book, detailing the two ethnographic years Conover spent in wealthy, wild and untethered Aspen in the late 1980s (before the inevitable slide into becoming The Observed) hit increasingly close to home. In a way, it is....not comforting but semi-assuring that the wealth gap in all of it’s unfairness and absurdity have been here in it’s current form since Regan’s 80s. Even Trump makes an appearance in here. The description of “regular” workers in this small resort town catering to the whims of the 1% struck particularly close - a guy that runs the dog kennels lives in a lean-to, the chef at a popular restaurant lives in a tent, the kitchen workers from Central America (whose arrival is greeted with typical racist suspicion in Aspen) work two or three jobs while living over an hour away. Watching the city I live in - Austin - transform it’s central core to be a playpen of the rich and responsibility-less, you think, “What charm will be left once the rest of us are priced out?” Lotus eaters and plagues of locusts both. Also one solemn chapter devoted to the dangers and draw of the harsh, stunning outdoors of the area - a man falls through a 13,000ft crevasse, a woman and her dog suffocate in an avalanche and it takes over a month for them to be found - will leave an imprint on me (a devoted hiker who yes - plans on sullying the paradise of the Colorado Rockies with my presence this summer) for a long time. This book is certainly 40 years old in some respects - old fashioned sexism and carelessness towards Native American appropriation come and go throughout - but the writing feels fresh and current and with just a few changes feels like it could be written about an outdoor circus of the rich now.

[Kristal Stidham]

An in-depth study of the people and activities in Aspen, Colorado, as observed during two years the author lived there in the late 1980s. This is easily the least popular of Conover’s books – certainly due more to the subject matter than his considerable research, observation, and writing talents.

As for me, I enjoyed the outdoor sports sections – probably because they’re true adventure, most like his other books. I also liked hearing about some of the crazy New Age-y situations he got himself into because I feel like I kind of know him from his other books (and from a brief email exchange!) and it’s funny to think of him doing something so out of character. The majority of the book’s content is about the world’s rich and famous people who are completely un-interesting to me, with the possible exception of John Denver, who is and always will be an Aspen and Colorado icon.

[Katie Scherrer · Rating 1 out of 5]

Total crap which really disappointed me because I enjoyed Conover's other books. I came across this when I was traveling and out of reading material and I still couldn't finish it.

[Andrew R. · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was pointed to this book via an article (tried to find title/author, but lost it somehow) about the preservation of 'local character' in a small Western resort town, and how this has led to inflated prices in an already inflated housing market that has priced out the workers necessary for the resort towns survival (economically speaking, but also spiritually: without locals, a small town becomes a pastiche). WHITEOUT does just this, though the crux of the matter (development) isn't addressed head-on until Chapter 8: You Cannot Find a Finer Home. But, as with anything, to appreciate the part you must read the whole. And the whole I loved.

It was interesting to see the analysis of consumerism (the 'in-excess' kind, the one the '80s gave us) and how it seems rather quaint: maybe it got its start on some Aspen peak and snowballed its way down to give us Bravo and E!. I also liked to read Conover as a young man (he has many female 'friends' in this book who certainly would not have appeared in OFFGRID, read earlier), and I think only a younger person could have written something like this. Something about his writing style really resonates with me... I make stories and build narratives to understand the lives and events of the people and places around me, and he does as much in his books for his readers.

Particularly beautiful, toward the end, is his short reflection on the name 'Aspen,' and how it says something about the town's identity beyond its forested slopes:

"Originally called Ute City by white men (after the inhabitants who had to be chased away), the camp on the Roaring Fork was renamed Aspen by mining promoter B. Clark Wheeler. The quaking aspen, or Populus tremuloides, a member of the poplar family, in so called because of the way its pale green leaves tremble in the summer breeze.... It makes sense that the name Aspen did not occur to the first white settlers, because at the time there were probably few aspen around: The aspen as a successional tree, which rapidly invades sides from which other trees have been removed. Early minors, needing wood for mines, houses, and railroad ties, denuded many of the mountains around town, and the appearance of aspen trees, so striking in the fall with their hues of gold and red, was one quick result.

Something happens to Aspen Grove, however. As the trees, with their beautiful white limbs, grow tall, their shade blocks out the direct sunlight that they require to reproduce themselves. The shade is just white ceilings of climax forest species such as Engelmann spruce and lodgepole pine need, however, and they will gradually replace the Aspen as the ecosystem returns to a climax forest.

The phenomenon of change in Aspen thus inhabit its very name." (257)

[Helynne · Rating 4 out of 5]

I first met Ted Conover back in 1988 when he was a guest writer for a day at the small Colorado college at which I was teaching. At that time, he had recently published Rolling Nowhere and Coyote, and we in the Humanities Department were honored to claim him as one of Colorado’s own. White Out: Lost in Aspen, Conover’s third foray into his practice of “immersion writing,” was published in 1991, just a few years after that campus visit. Although 30 years have passed since then, recent research shows that Aspen, Colorado, has remained as absurdly elitist and astronomically priced as it was when it boomed into a billionaires’ haven in the 1980s when Conover, posing as a Mellow Yellow taxi driver to the rich and famous, noted the sensation of coming into Aspen and “feeling one is really entering a sort of fourth dimension.” In a town where “taxi driving “had long been on the lunatic fringe” (15), he is able to probe “ the seamy underside of the town” by becoming “an official voyeur . . . spectating at a parade . . . . Aspen is a celebrity in and of itself, a constant live TV of famous people” (58). And some of those people ask their cab drivers to do some very odd things —like buy tubes of cookie dough and deliver them in the wee hours of the morning. (Other cab drivers fetch booze or know where to score cocaine for certain clients.)
Yes, some of Ted’s adventures now sound like ancient history. (He managed to sneak into the engagement party of Don Johnson and Melanie Griffith). Later, when Ted is able to give up his cab and get a job writing for The Aspen Times, he interviews the likes of the late singer John Denver (whose songs gave the Colorado mountain region a unique culture it had never known before) and Aspen matriarch Elizabeth Paepeke , then age 88, who bemoaned what Aspen had become. “Too many people, too much real estate.” Conover explains that Aspen began as a silver mining town in 1879. The silver failed by 1893, and the town remained obscure until 1945 when Elizabeth’s now-deceased husband Walter Paepeke bought up property and persuaded others to invest and start a skiing company. Today, that property sells for millions and millions of dollars. One of the most intriguing chapters discusses the obscenely huge and expensive homes that rich people build in Aspen. And the home buyers don’t need a loan; they pay cash. Such houses are rarely a permanent residences, but rather a second, third or fourth home that is inhabited only two weeks out of a year. Many nouveau riche Aspen homes are not built with the greatest taste—neo palaces. (Nonetheless, it’s fun to hear Conover’s descriptions of such over-the-top mansions). Meanwhile, property values have soared to the point that professionals and workers in Aspen have to live downvalley and commute. Aspen is about maintaining a certain upscale lifestyle and jealously guarding it, the author states. And he admits that the snobbish lifestyle is contagious . He found himself getting into trendy and pricy cycling regalia and soon realized the exotica of the town had spoiled him for the ordinariness of his hometown of Denver with its pollution and other urban ills. “The hipness of Aspen was unassailable , and if you lived there, you somehow took it with you when you left” (136). Fortunately Ted’s Denver friends lured him back, and he went—feeling, however, that he had lost his innocence.

[Laura · Rating 2 out of 5]

The author heads to Aspen and during the winter he is a taxi cab driver and in the summer he was working for a newspaper. He wrote about the experiences he had while he was living in Aspen for 2 years.
I found some of it boring and felt like some of the storytelling could have been cut short. The other chapters were hit and miss but there were a few that piqued my interest. I was saddened by the Search and Rescue chapter of some hikers and snowshoers. This chapter touched my heart. I was also interested in the chapter about the 3 day weekend retreat he went on and the toxic spirituality that the retreat entailed. Other from that I wasn't a fan.
The first book I read of Ted Conover's about immigrants lulled me into reading the next book where he was train hopping. That was a little harder to hold my interest and this one has made me realize that I don't want to read any more books by this author.


I found this book to be kind of boring and it went on and on about topics that could have used less storytelling in my opinion. It wasn't all a loss. There were interesting chapters that talked about

[David Ward · Rating 3 out of 5]

Whiteout: Lost in Aspen by Ted Conover (Random House 1991) (978.843).Ted Conover moves to Aspen to drive a taxi. I love the author's writing; I'm generally up for a good dose of the inside scoop he dishes. But Ted grew up a Colorado boy on Denver. Who is he going to find to dish on in Aspen?
He finds a lot of mega-rich people there and seems ambivalent about his ambivalence about their lifestyle. Conover meets John Denver and considered him to be a well-meaning huckster-fraud whose paeans in praise of Aspen assured an explosion of development by and for the ultra-rich.
Though well-written, this is not my favorite Ted Conover adventure. My rating: 7/10, finished 11/14/18.

[Annalise Grueter · Rating 1 out of 5]

I stopped reading this about a third of the way through in 2018 because not only was the writing unexeceptional, the narrative is a willful misinterpretation of many aspects of Aspen as well as obsequious fawning over human beings who sometimes live here. The vomit worthy passage seared into my brain involves stealing a forgotten balaclava from a ski mountain restaurant and then relishing blue runs on Ajax while "breathing Jack Nicholson's air." 🤮
He lost me shortly thereafter while reaching to force an interview with John Denver into his own preconceived notion of the man. I haven't yet found the motivation to force myself to finish the book.

[Derek Ludwig · Rating 3 out of 5]

1. I had read a few other books by this author and enjoyed them
2. this was an earlier book that he wrote and it was "ok"
3. it was about his time living in Aspen, CO and seeing how the rich/famous use the place for a ritzy lifestyle comparing it to the local non-rich people who can afford to live there less and less
4. there were some interesting experiences he had interacting with the rich/famous through his time as a taxi driver and working for the local paper as a reporter

[Zach · Rating 3 out of 5]

I expected to enjoy this book, but struggled to stay interested. Regardless, it was interesting to hear about attitudes, views, and lifestyles in Aspen during the author's time there compared to what I hear about now.

[Sam · Rating 4 out of 5]

Here's the big takeaway: John Denver was a dick.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

4th book I’ve read by Conover, and he never disappoints. I probably like his coyote book and prison book more, but this was a great nonfiction peek at Aspen.

[Ian Billick · Rating 3 out of 5]

Engaging and vivid with some slow sections. Interesting to read and think about CB.

[Kathy Leonard · Rating 3 out of 5]

2025-#57 1st person account of life in Aspen, CO in the late 89s.

[Julie Barrett · Rating 4 out of 5]

Whiteout, lost in Aspen by Ted Conover
Love learning about new places that we've yet to visit. The author does a great job of describing the area in detail.
Starts out with a guy who drives for the Mellow Yellow taxi company-his friend owns the place. Aspen is a ski area and celebrities flock to the area to spend lots of money.
Like the regular talk he gives them especially about the bars and how much further the drinks effect you due to the high elevation of the town vs. others in CO.
He was there to write a story so he experiences the local businesses for himself.
Uses his resources to house sit and save money. He gets a job writing stories for the local paper.
Loved hearing about the mines, history of them and how they were acquired.
Enjoyed hearing how search and rescue works when one goes down via an avalanche.
I received this book from National Library Service for my BARD (Braille Audio Reading Device).

[Joshua · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've been a fan of Ted Conover since his 1st published book Coyotes: A Journey Through the Secret World of America's Illegal Aliens, a journalistic account of his spending a year living with illegal migrant workers in the 1980s.

Whiteout deals with Conover's time in Aspen, CO, at the end of the 1990s amongst the culture of the super-rich, utterly narcissistic, and completely-disconnected-from-reality. He tells it from the point of view of an outsider who comes to town working as a taxicab driver and is slowly caught up in the scene. He ends up delving into seemingly disconnected mini-pieces that are tied together within a personal narrative: the party scene, the cult of John Denver, the ski scene, the mondless consumerism, and (best of all) the new age scene -- the latter of which is worth the read alone.

[Joe · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book describes what life is like in Aspen, Colorado, from a semi-insider's viewpoint: Ted Conover worked a variety of low-wage jobs, house sat and crashed in various houses, talked to bigwigs and finagled his way into posh parties.

I saw a recommendation for this book, and I remembered the author from another of his books, "Rolling Nowhere". I liked that book a lot, and hoped that this one would as good -- unfortunately, I was disappointed.

This book seemed to lack focus. Some of the anecdotes are moderately interesting, but a lot of it seems to be telling us time and again that some people living in Aspen are ridiculously wealthy, that they're fighting between new development and maintaining an existing feel.

The book itself is a pretty easy read. It's not bad, but it's not especially great.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ted Conover always succeeds in showing you an unfamiliar world. I'm a huge fan of his other books, Rolling Nowhere (riding the rails with hobos), Newjack (prison guard at Sing Sing), Coyotes (illegally crossing from Mexico into the US). All of these books opened my eyes to an experience I would not otherwise have been able to see. Ted Conover's writing is always captivating, but in the case of Whiteout its a little less eye opening. Sure the elite world of Aspen is not something I will ever experience, but neither is it something that will change the way I look at the world as his other books caused me to do. All in all, it was enjoyable, I'm glad I read it, but it is my least favorite of his books.

[Noah · Rating 2 out of 5]

After Conover's other three books, this one was a disappointment. I can understand that, after exploring two great underclasses (hobos and migrant workers), he wanted to report on an elite as a counterpoint, but his approach just doesn't quite work when applied to wealthy Aspenites. For the obvious practical reason that it's easier to play poor than play rich, he doesn't really immerse himself in the culture he's investigating this time around; he's stuck in a more typical observer posture, and it doesn't suit him. This book also feels dated in a way that his others don't (it may well be that what it means to be rich in America has changed a lot more in the last twenty years than what it means to be poor). This book isn't bad, but it's no standout.

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not the best thing Ted Conover's ever written, mostly because of its relatively small scope (the hypocrisies of a mountain resort town versus the globally heavy issues of immigration and homelessness and the American prison system), but still very enjoyable and worth reading. Conover is a brilliantly observant social analyst, even when tackling something as seemingly frivolous as the life and times of Aspen, Colorado. The tangent that struck me as most compelling was his discussion of the boom-and-bust pattern of the American West - the trappings might be different, but the pattern itself is still the same as it was in the 19th century.

[Darlene Ferland]

The book isn't what I usually read, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. Ted Conover gave an indepth look at Aspen, Colorado, now the playground of the rich and famous. He names names and that is part of the charm. The life of the regular people who work very hard to keep the sometime residents. They can't afford to live up on the mountain so traveling to work is difficult. He mentions John Denver and his influence in the making of a dream or not. I believe skiers and snowboarders would love this read as well.

[Susan · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

[Kristi · Rating 2 out of 5]

Whiteout is not nearly as good as Conover's other books. Perhaps I didn't connect to it as much because I have little knowledge of Aspen, Colorado. The book gives various snapshots of life in Aspen for the narcissistic, hedonistic culture of the grossly wealthy and famous. The reflections in the last chapter proved poignant, but didn't quite make up for the rest that, frankly, got rather tedious to read.

[Cheryl Newey · Rating 3 out of 5]

Friend and fellow bibliophile lent me this book. Reading a book on Aspen wasn’t on my radar, but I was interested in discovering Conover’s writing style. Enjoyed his matter-of-fact diction and adventurous tone. Conover’s ethnographic exploration of the good & bad of Aspen in the 70s & 80s did not draw me in as a reader.

[Rachael · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is the first time ever that I made it all the way to the end of the book and just couldn't finish the last ten pages of the book. It bored the hell out of me. I couldn't handle the redundancy of the exploration of Aspen's excessive lives and lifestyles.